Get Your Website Indexed On Google FAST!

Summary

This video tutorial offers a comprehensive guide on how to index a website on Google, ensuring visibility in search results. It explains the importance of indexing, introduces Google Search Console, and walks viewers through the process of adding a site, verifying ownership, and submitting a sitemap. The script also addresses how to request indexing for updated pages and emphasizes the significance of SEO elements like titles and meta descriptions. Aimed at small business owners, the video promises to turn viewers into indexing experts.

Takeaways

• 🔍 **Indexing Importance**: Ensure your website is in Google's 'phonebook' to show up in search results.
• 📈 **Google Search Console**: A free tool to monitor search performance and submissions.
• 🌐 **Adding Your Site**: Add your site to Google Search Console for better visibility and control.
• 📝 **Site Verification**: Verify your site with Google by adding a text record to your DNS settings.
• 🔗 **Sitemaps**: Submit your sitemap to help Google understand and index your site's structure.
• 📊 **Tracking Changes**: Use Google Search Console to track how updates affect your site's search performance.
• 🚀 **Quick Indexing**: Request indexing for updated pages to get them crawled and indexed faster.
• 🔄 **Respect SEO Changes**: Keep requesting indexing if Google doesn't reflect your SEO changes immediately.
• 📚 **SEO Basics**: This video is part of a series covering the fundamentals of SEO for small businesses.
• ⏲ **Patience**: Be patient with indexing; it may take several attempts for changes to appear on Google.

Q & A

What is the purpose of indexing a website on Google?

Indexing a website on Google is crucial because it ensures that your site is included in Google's searchable database, making it visible when people search for relevant keywords.

How does Google decide which pages to index?

Google crawls the internet, discovers pages, and then decides which ones to index based on their relevance and quality, effectively adding them to the 'Google phonebook'.

What is Google Search Console and how is it used?

Google Search Console is a free tool used to monitor and troubleshoot a website's performance on Google Search. It provides insights into search queries, impressions, and clicks.

How can one add a website to Google Search Console?

To add a website to Google Search Console, one needs to search for the tool on Google, click 'Start Now', and follow the setup process which includes verifying ownership of the site.

What is a sitemap and why is it important to submit it to Google?

A sitemap is a file where all of the pages of a website are listed. It's important to submit it to Google because it helps Googlebot to crawl the site more efficiently and discover all the pages.

How does one verify a website with Google Search Console?

Verification can be done using a domain provider's DNS records by adding a text record provided by Google Search Console, which proves ownership of the site.

What should you do if Google Search Console shows that your URL is not on Google?

If the URL is not on Google, you should use the 'Request Indexing' feature in Google Search Console to prompt Google to crawl and index the page.

How often should you request indexing of a page on Google?

It's recommended to request indexing every other day if you're making frequent updates. However, avoid overdoing it as Google limits the number of requests.

What is a text record and how does it relate to Google Search Console verification?

A text record is a type of DNS record used to verify domain ownership with Google Search Console. It's added to the domain provider's DNS settings and contains a unique code provided by Google.

What should you do if you've updated a page and want Google to reflect those changes?

After updating a page, use the 'Request Indexing' feature in Google Search Console to ask Google to crawl the page again and reflect the changes.

How can you find out who your domain provider is if you're unsure?

You can find out your domain provider by using a WHOIS lookup service like whois.com. Enter your domain name to see the registrar information.

Outlines

00:00

🔍 Introduction to Indexing and Google Search Console

In this opening section, the speaker introduces the concept of indexing on Google. The analogy of Google as a phonebook is used to explain how important it is for websites to be indexed in order to show up in search results. The speaker emphasizes that Google might find your site through crawling, but encourages viewers to use Google Search Console to actively submit their sitemap and request indexing for better visibility.

05:00

⚙️ Setting Up Google Search Console and Verifying Your Website

This section walks viewers through setting up Google Search Console, particularly how to add a website and verify it. The speaker explains the two verification methods—domain and URL prefix—recommending the domain option for its thoroughness, despite being slightly more technical. The guide covers how to create a DNS text record for domain verification, using examples like GoDaddy and SiteGround to demonstrate adding the record and verifying the website in Google Search Console.

10:02

🗺 Submitting Your Sitemap and Ensuring Proper Indexing

Here, the focus shifts to submitting a sitemap to Google Search Console. The speaker explains how to find your sitemap, typically located at yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml, and emphasizes the importance of using index sitemaps for platforms like WordPress. Instructions are provided for adding multiple types of sitemaps—page, post, and index—into Google Search Console, ensuring that important parts of the website, such as service pages and blog posts, are indexed.

Keywords

💡Indexing

Indexing refers to the process by which search engines like Google identify, categorize, and store web pages in their databases. It's crucial for a website to be indexed so that it can appear in search results. In the video, the presenter uses the analogy of a phonebook to explain the importance of indexing, emphasizing that a website must be 'in the Google phonebook' to be found when users search for relevant terms.

💡Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a free tool provided by Google that allows website owners to monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot their website's performance in Google Search results. The video highlights how to use this tool to submit a sitemap and request indexing, which are key steps in ensuring a site's visibility on Google.

💡Sitemap

A sitemap is an XML file that lists the pages of a website, allowing web crawlers to discover and index them more efficiently. The video script describes how to locate and submit a sitemap to Google Search Console, which is essential for new or updated pages to be recognized by Google's crawlers.

💡Crawling

Crawling is the process by which search engines like Google 'browse' the internet to discover new and updated web pages. The video script explains that Google crawls the web, then decides which pages to index, comparing the crawling process to a decision-making step in populating the 'Google phonebook'.

💡SEO

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which is the practice of optimizing websites to rank higher in search engine results, thereby increasing visibility and traffic. The video is part of a series on SEO, aiming to educate viewers on how to improve their website's performance in search results.

💡Impressions

Impressions in the context of SEO refer to the number of times a website's content is displayed in search results, but not necessarily clicked on. The video mentions using Google Search Console to track impressions over time, which can indicate the effectiveness of SEO efforts.

💡Clicks

Clicks measure the number of times users select a website's listing in search results to visit the site. The video script suggests monitoring clicks in Google Search Console as an indicator of whether SEO efforts are successfully driving traffic to the website.

💡Domain Provider

A domain provider is the company through which a website owner registers their domain name. The video script guides viewers on how to identify their domain provider, which is necessary for verifying ownership of a website when setting up Google Search Console.

💡DNS Records

DNS stands for Domain Name System, and DNS records are the databases that link domain names to their respective IP addresses. The video explains how to access and modify DNS records, specifically adding a text record, as part of the process to verify a website with Google Search Console.

💡Text Record

A text record is a type of DNS record that allows website owners to prove their ownership of a domain to services like Google Search Console. The video script provides a step-by-step guide on how to create a text record and use it for website verification.

💡Request Indexing

Request Indexing is an action within Google Search Console that prompts Google to crawl and index a specific URL. The video script explains how to use this feature to ensure that new or updated pages are quickly considered for inclusion in Google's search results.

Highlights

Introduction to indexing and its importance for showing up in Google search results.

Explanation of Google as a phonebook analogy for understanding indexing.

The process of how Google crawls the internet and decides which pages to index.

The benefits of adding your site to Google Search Console and submitting a sitemap.

What Google Search Console is and how to use it for tracking search results over time.

Instructions on how to set up an account with Google Search Console.

How to add a site to Google Search Console for the first time.

The importance of verifying your site with Google Search Console using a domain option.

How to find out who your domain provider is and why it's necessary for verification.

A step-by-step guide on setting up a text record for domain verification.

The significance of sitemaps for SEO and how to locate your sitemap.

How to submit your sitemap to Google Search Console.

The difference between an index sitemap and other types of sitemaps.

Advice on which pages to prioritize for indexing when launching a new website.

How to request indexing for a page that's been updated or is new.

The importance of patience and persistence when requesting indexing.

How to ensure Google respects your SEO title and meta description changes.

Encouragement to keep requesting indexing for updates to be reflected.

Conclusion and a call to action for viewers to engage with the channel.

Transcripts

If you're trying to index your site on Google.

If you're trying to figure out

how to submit your site map.

If you've updated a page,

you want Google to look at it.

Or if you're just struggling on how to use

Google Search Console, don't worry.

This video is for you.

If you're looking for a specific topic,

check out that timeline.

I think you know how YouTube works.

The specific topics are laid out in the chapters below.

But let's get started by talking about what

the heck is indexing and why does it even matter?

And don't worry, I'll be quick.

Think about Google as a phonebook.

Remember those When you search for

something like blank near me.

you're not in the Google

phonebook, you're not showing up.

So it's super important to make sure

that you're actually in the Google phonebook.

And what Google does is it crawls the internet, sees

all the pages out there, and then it decides

which ones do I want to index, which means

which ones do I want to put in the Google phonebook?

If you're not indexed, you're not showing up.

Now, Google might randomly

find your site while it's out there

crawling and decide that your website's good

and it wants to include it.

However, we can grease the wheels a little bit.

And typically

what we want to do

is add our site to Google Search Console,

submit our sitemap, and then request indexing.

And that's what the rest of this video is about.

What the heck is Google Search Console?

Great question.

Google Search

Console is a free tool that I typically use

to look at search results over time.

These are impressions which are like

daily views on Google here.

So you can see them going up

and to the right over time, which is always great.

You can also layer on clicks.

So these are people

that are going to your website from Google.

Exactly what we want to have happen

from our SEO efforts to get to Google Search

Console, just search for it on Google

and click on that.

Then click Start Now on the page.

And you should get started with setting up an account.

It only takes a little bit.

Really, if you already have a Google account,

it should be almost automatic

and then it'll start showing you

how to add your first site.

Now I don't have a fresh account to go with,

so I'm gonna show you how to add a site.

If you already have one in Google Search

Console, it's going to be pretty similar.

If you have a brand new account

and what you want to do is

go to the corner here and click

where the little web address is.

and then scroll down to the bottom, click Add Property.

Now if you're just starting

for the first time, you're going to see a screen

that looks eerily like this,

but a little bit different.

There won't be anything in the background, so

So don't get lost in that.

Now you have two options here.

I recommend using the domain option

because it's just a little bit better.

However, you have to do something

that's a little bit more technical, but that's okay.

We can figure it out.

I'm going to use

a fake web address here, Thencandesign.com.

It's really then can designs.com and hit enter.

And what it's going to do is it's going

to give us the directions for how to verify

using a text record.

Now this might seem scary, but it's not that bad.

Follow with me.

The first thing we have to

figure out is who is your domain provider?

Your domain is the name of your website.

For my Lean and Mean SEO agency

out in bend, Oregon is Thencandesigns.com.

Now I know that my domain provider is SiteGround.

Yours might be GoDaddy or Namecheap.

There's a lot out there

If you don't know who

your domain provider is,

let me show you a quick shortcut.

Go to whois.com/Whois

if you just go to who is.com

they'll try to sell you domain.

And then just enter in your domain here.

Pause for dramatic effect.

So type in your domain and then click search.

if you look here you'll see the registrar.

and if you don't know who this provider is,

like two cows is a partner with a lot of, providers.

So you can actually scroll down a little bit

and you can see other clues like, oh, hey, look, there

it is.

It's actually

been hosted on SiteGround, so it's probably SiteGround.

And you can also see like who are two partners

and you might be able to reverse engineer your head.

Oh yeah.

I think I bought my domain through GoDaddy

or whoever it is.

Once you figured out who your domain provider is,

log into your domain provider's website

and you're going to need to access your DNS records.

If you don't know how to do this, don't get scared.

We're going to do seriously the most easy

DNS record possible, which is a text record.

Okay.

So when you're ready for that step,

go to the search bar on YouTube and type

DNS records.

And then your domain provider.

Okay.

So DNS records, GoDaddy DNS records SiteGround.

Whoever it is, there will be a quick video

that shows you how to do that.

I'm going to show you how to do this for GoDaddy.

So I have another domain here, local SEO Academy AE,

which is where I teach people how to do

SEO services for their clients.

We're going to click on there,

and then you're going to see that

the DNS is handled where my head is actually.

So it's down here.

Doo doo doo right there.

It says manage domain.

Let's click on that.

And then right here you're going to click on DNS.

And then it would be right here

you would click Add New Record.

But I'm actually hosting with SiteGround.

So my records are somewhere else.

So for SiteGround you go to domain

and then DNS zone editor right here.

and then go to Text record.

And then this is

where you're going to paste the thing from before.

So way back when

back in Google Search Console,

they actually gave us this information.

You need to make a text record

wherever it's being hosted.

Hit copy right here.

And then you're going to go back over here

And you're going to paste it in this little box

right here.

and typically for most providers,

you're going to leave this blank,

but you might do an ad saying that

usually there will be hints

on what you're supposed to do, and then click create

and you'll get a little text record.

Now the next step is to hit this verify

button in the corner.

Just so you know, the first time you click

verify, you're almost

always going to get greeted with this red screen okay.

And it's going to take a few times

to turn that off.

So typically it takes about ten to 30s

in my experience.

But it can take a couple minutes.

If it's taking longer than five minutes

then there might be something wrong.

And if it takes longer than an hour,

drop me an email.

I'll put my email below so that you can just reach out

and maybe we can figure it out together.

But eventually we'll get greeted

with the green square of happiness.

We can go to property and we'll see the information

we were looking for.

now that our site's added to Google Search Console, now

we have to submit our site map to Google.

How do we do that?

The first thing we have to figure out

is where the heck is our site map?

Typically, a quick Google search of site

map location four

and then put Squarespace, Webflow, WordPress.

But be more specific than that for

you're using WordPress.

You're probably using a WordPress plugin.

By the way, my perfect WordPress

plugin setup is below.

Then you're going to

want to actually say Yoast or SEO press or Rankmath.

Whichever SEO plugin you're using, however

kind of a shortcut that you can use is to

just do your domain slash sitemaps dot XML.

So let's do local SEO Academy dot

CO slash sitemaps dot XML.

All right. So I want you to see that.

So slash sitemaps XML and then watch this.

It's going to redirect to sitemaps that XML.

So that's perfect.

And so right now what I'm on for WordPress

is this thing called a index sitemap.

And so that's really important to know that for

WordPress you're going to need an index sitemap.

And then you're probably

going to need a page sitemap,

especially if you're

a small business that serves local customers.

Then you're

probably just going to have a page sitemap.

Now you might also

have a post sitemap if you have a blog.

However, unlike what

I'm doing here, I would recommend

getting rid of your category sitemap

and your post tag sitemap.

I'm not going to talk about

how to do that in this video,

But I'll be sure to cover that in a future video

where I dive much deeper on sitemaps

and how to keep them nice and clean.

But let's say you did have all four of these sitemaps.

So you got to include

these four sitemaps in the index one,

which in this case is that sitemaps dot XML.

But later on it might be something like

sitemaps underscore index

or there's

a whole

bunch of configurations. So you just have to

make sure you get the links right.

Get all of those links.

Go back to Google Search Console and starting

with the highest up one, which is probably

the index one, click on sitemaps.

And then what you're going to do

is you're going to insert those one at a time.

Okay.

And when you first add a sitemap

this is not going to be green.

It's going to be red.

Wait a second.

Hit refresh and about

you know literally like five to 10s.

And it's just switch over to green

and then do it for the next one

and do it for the next one and do it for the next one.

So you can see all

the sitemaps for then can designs are already here.

You can see page

sitemap one is the default apparently for this one.

So that's interesting.

Maybe that's a quirk of SEO press

and that's how you submit your sitemap.

But you're not done yet.

How do we index

pages on Google.

This is important.

This also answers the question of

how do I get my page to show up on Google?

Or I've changed the content on my page

and I want Google to see these changes.

All of these questions get answered right here.

Now, one thing I want to note is if you're

launching a new website right now,

you only get about 11 or 12 of these per day,

so be smart about it.

Do your home page, do your money pages,

which I consider your service pages

and your location pages.

And if you got crawls left, hit your about,

hit your contact and then do everything else.

Okay, if you have some extra blog

post, don't worry about those.

Hit those tomorrow, but get your money pages today.

And of course, if you're just to update

one page that you've just done some tweaks to

and you want Google to crawl, no worries.

We only have one page so we don't have

to worry about the quota.

But no matter

what, we're going to follow the same process.

So let's say we have this really sick page.

Hey, look at that guy right there.

What's he doing?

let's say we have this really sick page

that we want Google to index, right?

You know, we had all these DIY SEO

trainings nicely organized on this page right here.

We want it to be on Google.

So go up and just, you know, copy the domain.

You know how to copy the domain right.

Command.

See we're going back over to Google Search Console.

Now sometimes you'll see people

click URL inspection first.

You don't actually have to do that.

You can just click up here and paste in the domain.

And as soon as you paste that in it's

going to pull in the data that it already has.

Now if the page is already on Google,

you're going to see this.

Notice that it says URL is on Google.

If that's the case, you're good to go.

You're probably just updating the page.

Nice.

You can just click Request Indexing.

But if you feel like there's anything funny happening

or this is a brand new page,

so you're greeted with a different screen,

then you're going to want to keep watching.

So in this case I actually put an incorrect URL in.

And so it's saying URL is not on Google.

You'll also see this if it's a brand new page

that just hasn't been indexed yet.

This is a good clue

that your page is not in the Google phonebook.

We need to fix that.

And so you might be thinking, okay,

I want to hit request indexing,

but don't do that yet.

Actually, what you should do is press this button.

And honestly, a lot of times I press this button first.

And so what it's going to do

is it's going to test the live URL.

This takes about two minutes.

So we're going to pause the video for a second.

And we're going to come back and see what it says.

All right check this out.

So it's actually I forgot it's a page that redirects.

So this URL

is available to Google but it's not on Google.

So that's what that test was

for to show us that it's on Google.

Now you may have a URL that's showing that

it's on Google, but it might be unavailable.

So that's why I like doing this live test.

You'll know you've done the live test

because it'll actually have a recording right here.

It's not midnight right now is it?

And so after that then you can click Request Indexing.

And it's super fast.

Now what if you've done something like watched

our video on how to write the perfect SEO

title and meta description link below,

and you want to make sure

that Google is respecting the change

and they're actually showing it in Google,

but you're noticing that

they haven't updated the SEO title,

which we've learned is so important

for showing up on the right search pages.

Well, what you're going to want

to do is keep indexing the page.

I try not to do it

every single day, but maybe every other day.

Usually by that third time, Google will have respected

your choices or your suggestions, if you will.

And so keep pressing that request.

Indexing.

You'll see this little button here,

and you'll see that your, indexing

has been requested.

However, don't overdo it.

It's not going to let you do it multiple times.

and just kind of be patient.

It takes a couple tries to get an update sometimes.

And so

just really pay attention

if you're changing content on a page because it just

might not get indexed right away.

Phew-- You made it, my friend.

You are now an indexing expert.

You know what indexing is.

You know how to use Google Search Console.

You know how to submit site maps.

You've already subscribed to the channel,

so that way you'll get notified

when that sitemaps video comes out down the line.

You hit that like button

because you found something useful.

You dropped a comment below when you had a question,

so that I could actually

reply to you and help you out in that situation.

And in case you didn't know, this is part of the small

biz SEO success series where we're dropping

tons of videos on the basics of SEO.

Here's another video that's super useful.

Sorry,

this one was a little longer than the rest,

but I want to make sure we covered all the topics.

So now your page should be showing up in Google.

And if it's not, just keep hitting Request Index.

And while you're waiting, check out the next video.

I'll see you in that one.